Next time your son comes home and tells you that his classmates are telling him that it is more manly to play football or basketball than swim, point him to the below study. Seems men with higher testosterone levels prefer one-on-one competition to group competition.
www.pranjmehta.com/.../Mehtaetal2009.pdf
In college at Ill state univ in the late 60's , our breaststroker was the center on the football team ! Our team looked like a small football team with some of also bigger than normal swimmers.
In my school the swimmers were saved from having to perform such demonstrations by the fact that one of the starting linemen on the football team swam butterfly. He let everyone know that swimming practice was "way tougher" than football practice. I'll take his word for it as my body type is incompatible with football...
One of the other local schools had an All-Conference Halfback who was All-State in the 50 Free. Of course, our football jocks couldn't read well enough to have noticed that in the papers!
This thread comes up once a year with the same predictable statements - some big football player joins one or two swim workouts and proclaims it harder than football. Never hear about some skinny swimmer donning full gear and doing full contact scrimmages against 200-300 pound lineman in 90+ degree weather. No thanks, I'll stick to swimming. Both sports present unique challenges and develop their athletes in different ways.
This thread comes up once a year with the same predictable statements - some big football player joins one or two swim workouts and proclaims it harder than football. Never hear about some skinny swimmer donning full gear and doing full contact scrimmages against 200-300 pound lineman in 90+ degree weather. No thanks, I'll stick to swimming. Both sports present unique challenges and develop their athletes in different ways.
One of my best friends played high school football and swam. He was a good enough football player to receive small school scholarship offers. Today he is a master’s swimmer with the abilities to be a top ten in the nation in distance events. He would tell you that football is way harder and mention the getting laid out, head rung, throwing up, constantly getting yelled at by coaches. Football players also are far more likely to become injured playing there sport, including injuries that keep them out of the game forever and alter there life’s course. He ultimately declined to play in college.
FYI - When I was in High School in the 70’s, multiple members of the swim team played or participated in other high school sports. If Michel Phelps had been a teenager in the 60’s or 70’s, he might have played football, basketball and swum in High School. In today’s world proponents of there sport tend to push specialization, they have to keep the fiefdom going.
